Gladys
by slire
Summary: Where Marv got the inspiration to name his Springfield Armory M1911A1, Gladys.


**Disclaimer:** Sin City © Frank Miller

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**Gladys**

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In (Ba—)Sin City, there's no middle temperature. Either it's hot as hell or cold as fuck. Currently, it borders on the latter.

The housing in the Projects is lousy, and the paper thin walls do little to keep in the warmth. The whole street heard the couple on 4B having sex, taking the day's frustration out on each other's bodies. There'd been a party, too, its cause of celebration as clear as day: something has tried to destroy them and failed.

Marv doesn't mind walking in the cold.

It's better than home, anyway; better than seeing exhausted mama eyes roam his report card, squinting in disappointment. It was safe to say he wasn't gonna split the atom. They don't have the money for private teachers or extra classes, not after all the surgeries for her worsening blindness.

Kids are selling lemonade in the suburbs and crack in the streets. None of the gangs touch him though. He's big for a boy of 13, and _tough_, too. People don't dare fuck with him—or befriend him, for that matter. He tells himself that loneliness is strength. Later, he'll realise loneliness is... loneliness. The feel of litter under his boots is familiar. Always been like this. Crushed beer bottles. Cigarette butts. Gum. Bullets. Dog poop, some of them fresh and steaming. Senator Roark promised change. Shithead. Nobody working for minimal pay believed in it. As if anyone gave a shit.

Marv is still walking, thinking in nothing in particular, when someone passed him in a flow of black and white.

Sister Gladys.

She is one of the nuns in school. Or was, anyway. Huge woman. Black. Big tits too, one of the older kids had said leeringly, and Marv had never looked someone so intensely in the _face_ as sister Gladys before after he'd heard it. She is quite terrifying—but nice, too, 'cos she'd dressed a wound of his in 2rd grade without asking questions. Catholic or not, the school had been godless.

She gives a little nod to Marv as she passes, taking long strides, but in no hurry.

This is a bad neighborhood.

The whole area of the Projects is bad, but this part—this part is rotted to the core. Like that rotten apple he saw in the summer, swarming with a dozen wasps. (Emiliy Carter had gotten stung on the nose. Even her caked on makeup couldn't hide the swelling afterwards). The wasps _here_ were the worst sort, the ones mothers warned their kids about—drug dealers, pimps, thieves, thugs, even murderers. Here the women handled body bags like laundry. Marv just liked coming here because nobody bothered him here.

It didn't take long before the nun caught the attention of a three mean looking youths.

"Yo sister, y'wanna know what's black and white and red all over?" He maliciously looks her outfit up and down.

Sister Gladys eyes them, unimpressed. She shrugs her shoulders in a dismissive fashion and walks on.

"Hey, fuck you! This isn't fucking middle school, don't you ignore me you fat whore!"

Gladys stops. She does not turn around. "Wash your mouth, Randell."

That tone. Oh, that tone could make a kid piss themselves. Marv flinches, and he's not the receiving end of it. Randell flinches, too—they all do—but then he remembers he's not ten and stalks towards her, followed by his goons.

Flashes of silver.

Switchblades, out in the open.

Surrounding Gladys.

"Better rethink that move, boy. You don't want trouble, not with the Lord, nor with _me_. Especially not with me."

"And what's an old sister like you gonna do, eh? Give us detention? Call our parents?" Randell inhales a thick line of snot, previously dangling from his nose. "My mom used to care. Not anymore. Declared I was a fucking failure on her deathbed."

Everything's buried here in the Projects. Both guilt _and_ dead bodies. Gladys' sympathy has been drained over the years. She feels bad for his mother, but also for the girl Randell raped in seventh grade. Word travels fast in the Projects. Cops don't care to check unless they have to.

"Then make your poor mother proud for a change and walk away, kid."

Randell screams and charges, "I'm not a kid—!"

Another flash of silver. This time, the object isn't sharp, but it's huge and long—a gun. To be specific, a Springfield Armory M1911A1. Marv recognizes it at once. He's always wanted one of those. 'Cos gun can do an awful lot of harm. Even in the arms of a sister. Especially a Sin sister. Aim it just right, and plunge the world into disorder. (Marv subconsciously wishes to do this one day.)

She presses it against Randell's temple. There is a pause, as if the world has stopped spinning. Gladys does not move, but her left nostril widens.

"Sweet baby Jesus, Randell. Did you just piss yourself? Again?"

The mockery makes him reattack, and she replies by blowing off his testicles. "That's for the Virgin Mary," she mutters. "And lil' Caroline. You won't be soiling anyone like that again now, boy." She turns to his buddies, who are shaking and sniveling. "Take him to Johnson, the back alley doctor. If y'have enough money for those fancy knives, you have enough to prevent his death. Not enough to save his future kids, though, but I'm sure it's no great loss." The goons shakily do as commanded, dragging their screaming friend away.

The nun turns away from them.

Marv sees where she's looking—straight towards Jack Jung, the best (illegal) weaponry boutique in Sin City. That's probably where her original destination was. But she doesn't move before she's given him an advice he'll promise to uphold.

"Want to do me a favour, Marvin?" Gladys blows the steam of the barrel. "Get a gun."


End file.
